Re-forming the Church of England:Tractarian responses to the Reformation

This mini-exhibition within the beautiful library at Pusey House uses contemporary printed books, manuscripts and artefacts from the House collections to look at how the Tractarians reconciled their Catholic Anglican faith with the Reformation of the 15th and 16th centuries, and how the Oxford Movement itself created a new Reformation within the Church of England in the 19th century.​​Main themes:The Tracts for the Times and the ReformationThe Tractarians and the Martyrs' MemorialTractarian Reforms

Opens September 11Monday - Friday, 9.30-5pm

Please contact pusey.librarian@stx.ox.ac.uk to enquire about curator led tours outside these times.

Isaac the Syrian, also called Isaac of Nineveh, lived and wrote during “the golden age of Syriac Christian literature” in the seventh century. Cut off by language and politics from the Churches of the Roman Empire and branded “Nestorian,” the Church of the East produced in isolation a rich theological literature which is only now becoming known to outsiders. Yet over the centuries and in all parts of Christendom, Isaac’s works have been read and recommended as unquestionably orthodox.

This paper will explore why, when book 1 of De Doctrina Christiana is really about love, Augustine persisted in using the categories of signs and things, and use and enjoyment, even though they give rise to so many difficulties, and proved so inimical to what he actually wanted to say. It argues that, in fact, these classical categories are subverted and transformed by Augustine’s treatment of the double commandment of love of God and love of neighbour and his conviction that God can ultimately be known only by a ‘knowledge of the heart’- one which leads, not to an exercise of the intellect but to doxology or praise of the unknowable, ineffable God. It takes issue with recent trends in Augustine scholarship which, in examining Augustine’s debt to Stoicism, appear to have undermined his doctrine of grace and loving knowing.